


Can I make it better, with the lights turned off?

by eleanorknows



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Angst, Bipolar Disorder, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mickey Feels, because Mickey's a romantic at heart, post 4x12, there's fluff somewhere
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-08
Updated: 2014-08-08
Packaged: 2018-02-12 07:27:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2100792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eleanorknows/pseuds/eleanorknows
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The immediate aftermath of Fiona's talk with Mickey at the Milkovich house. Then another moment further down the line in the bed they share. Mickey learns how to be someone’s shelter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Can I make it better, with the lights turned off?

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from "[XX - Shelter](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfTfHTUUee4)" with a slight change. This song inspired so much of the mood and feel of this writing. Oh Mickey. This scene's probably been written so many times already but I just couldn't get this out of my head so here it is, my version! Also the first time I'm writing these characters so hopefully the essence is at least there.

Fiona, Debbie, and Carl are gone with a conclusive thud of the door.

So what are you supposed to do when you've received the worse fucking news of your goddamn life?

For a moment, a whole moment, Mickey stops breathing. Like it's impossible to, like a pitiful sob threatening to escape overpowers his body's own biological need to survive. Because surviving isn't living. Ian taught him that.

But he's a Milkovich and that trumps all. He chokes back the bitter bile and roughly wipes the stray tears threatening to escape down his cheeks. Fucking breathe, you dumbass. He grips the back of the wooden kitchen chair with clenched fingers, willing the paralyzing fear from consuming him. _And breathe out._

He focuses on the wooden grain, the scratches and stains that match perfectly with everything else in this shitty house. Mickey wants to laugh mockingly at the letters on his knuckles. It doesn't matter how many people he can fuck up, how can he fight something invisible? Something so out the realm of his understanding, it’s family trips that don’t involve fucking guns and violence. This is the type of shit they’re all taught to sweep under the dirty rug; like every single traumatizing, life-crushing thing that’s happened in this house. _And breathe in._

Would it helped if he prayed? He learned to stop such a long time ago. Life is a damn bitch is a damn fact. How can it not, growing up here? God-forsaken, the very definition. He squeezes his eyes shut and dips his head down, shoulders hunched. _And breathe out._

A petite hand, weathered from labor and toil but still feminine and gentle, touches his right one. Mickey looks up into Mandy’s brown eyes that say everything with one look, she understands. Her thumb rubs half-circles against his skin. _And breathe in._

He turns his palm up and clasps hers, giving it a tight squeeze. That's all it takes to signal to her that he won't push away, won’t put on his macho guise when the situation gets too raw and vulnerable. She physically feels it when she hugs him. _And breathe out._

"He'll be okay, we'll all make sure of that. We just got him back, we're never letting him go again," Mandy speaks the words she knows Mickey can't vocalize out loud yet. She feels him nod against her shoulder and starting to release from the hug.

"How the hell did my first boyfriend become your boyfriend, you bastard," Mandy adds and elbows him like they usually do when they're roughhousing, "I’m a fucking C cup!"

Mickey raises eyebrow and the corner of his mouth twitches into an upwards curve, “Pretty sure that’s the problem, Mandy. You better get your A-cup ass to work and dream the fuck on.”

This only goads her along and with a smirk, Mandy takes a few steps backwards as she grabs her bag, "Shit, I'd be Susie Homemaker wife and he'd be my Stepford husband with our white picket fence and fancy dinner parties with fancy silverware every day for Mr. and Mrs. Phili–Ian Gallagher."

Her smile falters for a split second but fuck if she isn’t tough as nails, shoving him affectionately again and out the door faster than Mickey can respond. He wishes he knew the right words but he’s instead left glaring at the half-open door to her room and Kenyatta shuffling around. Motherfucker needs to be dealt with – but damn he’s having trouble focusing and thinking and Mickey stares at his own door instead, almost willing himself to see an image inside that defies reality.

But this door isn’t a closet to some winter wonderland or some magical shit, Mickey gnaws on his bottom lip as his blue eyes glaze over the now familiar outline of Ian’s back and shoulders leading to the mop of red hair, no longer a nice sheen but matted and defeated. Even so or especially so, Mickey wants to run his fingers through and rest them there. He wants to do that and so much more, maybe even more than he’s ever been capable of and it’s frightening how much he stands to lose.

Just standing here right now, hip leaned against the doorway, is making his heart race and fucking claw up out of his throat into a beating, bloody mess flopping on the floor like an od'd bitch. His conversation with Fiona flicked a switch that rocks Mickey’s world so bad because now there are actual names that mean confusing things like disease and hospitalization, like sand slipping through his fingers. Like Ian slipping away. Again. That thought alone threatens to break him beyond repair, drown him in despair.

Instead, he speaks desperately normal words, “Imma head to work, gotta protect Kevin’s seven-foot ass and after the shit he pulled too, his lucky fucking day!”

Silence. Mickey knows Ian is awake because his breaths are not steady and slow, but more labored and self-aware.

“Second time’s probably gonna be some middle school gangster-wannabe punks with shivs or some shit and Steven fucking Seagal will probably fall for it anyways.”

No response.

Mickey expects this and it still fucking stings. The voice in the back of his head, a voice sinisterly similar to Terry’s, mockingly sneers the words fag and failure. Well, Terry can go fuck himself and rot in a small metal box ideally forever.

His devastation is this. He doesn’t know how to fix this, doesn’t know how to deal with being so useless without his loud bravado and irritable retorts in the face of life’s rejections. Mickey’s not sure he can ever put up his protective walls against the person in his bed again. It scares him shitless because where does that leave him?

Ian shrinks even further into himself and the sheets and Mickey can no longer compute what he’s feeling. Mickey places the two bottles of water and three of Mandy’s breakfast bars (because she takes time to make breakfast for others but rarely for herself) on the nightstand. Then he kneels down to come face-to-face with tormented eyes that obviously avoid his own, staring into the wall. The stories that wall could tell, could it tell him Ian’s secrets? Instead he’s just left with his own thoughts.

_I’m so sorry I’m hurting you. Fuck. What should I do? What do you want me to do? Not be here? Not bother you?_

Mickey’s hands are clammy, frantic, and empty and he kind of hates himself right now.

_Cure you with the overwhelming feelings I have bottled inside that it feels like I can never been the same ever again? Tell you we’ve already been through the impossible and now I can never give you up?_

The words are lost in him and that makes him want to cry, so instead he places everything into a kiss on Ian’s right temple.

“There’s a sandwich in the fridge if you feel like it….I’ll be back, Ian.”

Mickey grabs his wallet and lingers a little too long, that’s always been the other’s effect on him. The Gallagher Effect; a gravitational pull to travel a never-ending orbit around one Ian Gallagher. Veering off-course is like free falling, is like the end of his existence.

So he keeps trying.

-

The window shades that never block anything completely out are even more sheer right now, flooding a part of the room with a surreal sheen. The moonlight makes Ian's skin appear iridescent and fragile. He has the covers wrapped tightly around himself like a cocoon, a frantic creature that wants to burrow and hide.

It’s frustrating, so damn frustrating. Most days Mickey carried on, but not today. This day, this fucking ordinary day that’s just like any other but somehow it’s not. Today, it sinks in that maybe nothing in the world would make a difference. Mickey stays at the doorway indecisively, peeking backwards into the dark living room. If he's going to be honest, channel surfing until 3am was probably not for the stimulating infomercials that played on an endless loop. Well maybe he just isn't sleepy.

 _Liar, liar, pants on fucking fire, Mick._ He can head Ian’s teasing voice in his head, paired with a trademark smirk. That makes him smile and not much does lately; that’s pretty pathetic even to him.

 _Are you just gonna stand there with your dick in your hand?_   Mickey alone can hear Ian mischievously continue.

The little asswipe knows exactly how to get him to do anything, big or small and that’s no simple feat. It's fucking epic shit, like Odysseus crossing the damn sea for ten years to get back to Penelope. And yeah, Mickey’s often the last to show up but all roads eventually leads him back to Ian. Always.

He strips down to his boxers, his clothes a discarded heap on the floor. A ghost of a hand tugs him towards the bed and his limbs sink in under the sheets. His eyes are wide open and staring into the dark void of the ceiling. Starting a week ago, Ian could no longer handle being touched for longer than brief seconds. Conversations, even one-sided ones, destroyed the younger man and compounded his guilt beyond recognition. Ian didn't really have to say, Mickey just sort of knew to read between the lines of the redhead's short, frantic outbursts. Right now he feels high even without drugs, that floating surreal feeling.

Against the shadowy ceiling, Mickey envisions the world continuing to spin without Ian, too fast and too strong. He’s static, both nonmoving and incommunicable noises. Like when Mickey switches through different radio stations and bad reception means only indistinguishable sounds. But Ian is also of the third variety, static electricity. Mickey desperately wants to rest is forehead against that cold shoulder until they cling onto each other like pieces of laundry coming out of the dryer.

And he does. It’s like coming home, the constant sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach gets a temporary reprieve. For five seconds, his forehead stays glued there against Ian's bare back until he reluctantly leaves with a gentle brush of his lips against pale skin. Then he’s back to his side of the bed again, sitting slumped against the headboard.

Then it aches again, his entire being. His hand impulsively reaches for the bottle of beer on the nightstand and he takes a few generous gulps.

Mickey’s lost in his own thoughts, lingering on earlier in the day when Lip stopped by check in on Ian and they do their established ritual of smoking together on the porch. They talk about Ian, sometimes they chitchat, and sometimes they just sit there. Often they’re joined by others. Fiona and Veronica with their long inquisitive side-glances until it truly hits them, the stunning realization of how nonnegotiable his involvement in Ian’s wellbeing is and they stops staring. _Because you don’t stare at family, you accept them._ Kevin fucking Ball, everyone.

Carl often chugging on a liter of mountain dew while nursing his first heartbreak and Debbie with Liam in her lap eyeing the neighborhood guys in tank tops walking down the street. Mandy without wounds on her face licking on a popsicle and Kenyatta chased the fuck out with a little help. _One, you leave and never come back. Two, we come in middle of the night, cut off your ugly skin stick, and shove down your throat. Best blow job of your life, guaranteed._

Surprisingly or maybe unsurprisingly, having the commonality of being scared shitless and harboring unconditional love for the same person draws them together. They’re aspects of Ian through association, a reflection of him or fragments or something. It’s too hard for Mickey to explain it, he doesn’t know those types of words. What he does know is that all he wants to talk and worry about is Ian and it’s easier to be around people who understand even a fraction of the feeling.

Mickey’s finally drifting off. His eyes are half-lidded and he’s still seated against the headboard, too dazed to move. And then it feels like a dream, like many of his dreams. The bed dips and creaks under sudden movement and Ian’s head nestles into his lap, against his left thigh. The younger man’s hand rests on Mickey’s knee, casually and yet so intimate.

And this is Mickey's everything, his whole fucking world finally making some semblance of sense again. Panic and elation ebbs and flows alternatively, battling for control against the steady buzz of his typical alcohol intake. But it cuts through like a relentless knife, the realization that it hurts to his soul how badly he’s missed this touch. And it’s not a dream, at least not for him.

But maybe it is for Ian, he angles his head in cautious anticipation searching for an answer until he sees the noticeable flutter of ginger eyelashes and wide, faraway eyes. Ian is awake, probably has been for a while. For minutes, for hours, for days, who fucking knows? Mickey feels the grip on his knee tighten, tortured and desperate and so alone. The feelings are his own projection, but maybe Ian’s isn’t far off from that.

Guesses and speculation and maybe just wishful thinking, a dangerous game they’re all playing with Ian. Is it Russian roulette, is someone going to lose in the end? Well fuck you very much.

In a moment of instinctive clarity he strokes his fingers through disheveled, red hair in soothing motions. It seems to be helping. Ian’s eyes don’t close into slumber but they lose their hard edge, blinking at a more normal pace. But there’s wetness in them, dripping past the dark circles of exhaustion onto the older man’s skin.

Mickey continues running his finger pads along Ian’s forehead and hair while his other arm rests protectively against his back. No words are needed for this, no correct or incorrect or confusing ones. Just them. In this bed, this night, every night; it’s a foregone conclusion. He's not good with most things, life fucked him good and hard with that message. But this caretaker shit he never even knew he was capable of, he can do this. He can shelter them, together.

Ian starts tracing invisible doodles with his index finger against the side of Mickey’s calf. This is different. Mickey might’ve thought about this more in-depth but he’s so tired and this is so nice that he just drifts pleasantly between awake and asleep, real and fake.

With a soft jolt, Mickey wakes up and quickly realizes his shoulders and back have a dull ache from sitting up all night. The morning is disorienting and fucking confusing. But life is dirtier, messier, and smellier; dreams are glossy even when they’re nightmares. This is real. His thighs are empty of the extra weight and Ian’s back is turned to him.

It’s almost heartbreaking except Mickey realizes his left palm is cushioned between the younger man’s face and the bed, Ian’s own hands cradling it in place. Eventually he has to pull away, take his numb hand back but not right now.

Mickey eases himself against Ian. This moment in existence with them connected, this is all that matters.

**Author's Note:**

> Leaving this same message in all my stuff: I get anxious and self-conscious about my writing so I have to actively work towards building up enough confidence to read/respond to comments and look at stats. So please don't be offended if I don't respond in this century, I swear I'm not ignoring you and sincere apologies. Thank you SO MUCH for any comments, kudos, and bookmarking!


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